““They were going away to spend three days with their teachers and lots of farmyard animals at a ‘granja escuela’ – ‘a school farm’. This had been sold to us as a further, intensive round of group-formation training and, therefore, key to their education. I felt a pang of envy as I watched my child go. He already belonged to that noisy, congenial mass known as Spaniards in a way that I – with my innate, sometimes awkward, anglosajón individualism – find impossible.””